WIRED Awake June 23: YouTube's new video format bridges the gap to VR

Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, YouTube has launched its new VR180 video format as a stepping stone to virtual reality, Google has urged the US government to clarify laws on international data seizure warrants, Facebook has launched its Online Civil Courage Initiative to tackle rising extremism in the UK and more.

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YouTube has announced VR180, a format designed to make creating immersive content much easier (WIRED). The goal is to carve a path between today's 2D video and the immersive, interactive stuff of tomorrow. R180 does not in any way qualify as virtual reality. Rather, the format renders 180-degree video in stereoscopic 3-D. The picture appears wider than your field of view (about 135 degrees) so you must move your head slightly to take in the whole scene. Stereoscopy provides a remarkable sense of depth and size, but even at its best, it's like sitting in a dome theatre watching the night sky above you. If you turn around, all you'll see is black. VR180 cameras from LG, Lenovo, and the Chinese company Yi will follow this winter and YouTube has worked with Adobe to make sure the video-editing app Premiere can handle VR180. Current figures show that YouTube has 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, which means that the company is one of the few with enough clout to successfully introduce a brand new video format.

Google has urged the US government to create a revised framework to handle the murky legal status of law enforcement warrants demanding access to data stored on servers outside the USA (Engadget). Google senior vice president and general counsel Kent Walker told the USA's Congress that new laws should make it clear what tech firms should do when presented with a warrant, and proposed that the US and allied countries – those that do not have "oppressive regimes" – should forge an international deal allowing international law enforcement agencies to directly request data from US companies without first seeking government permission. Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have also stated that they would support such a scheme.

Weed firms are using Instagram influencers to dodge regulations

In partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Facebook is launching the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) in the UK, a counterspeech program to help to tackle online extremism and hate speech (WIRED). The initiative is being jointly announced in London by Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Strategic Dialogue's CEO Sasha Havlicek, as well as founding partners Brendan Cox, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox and head of the Jo Cox Foundation, Mark Gardner from the Community Security Trust, Fiyaz Mughal at Tell MAMA and Shaukat Warraich from Imams Online. The OCCI is being set up to offer "financial and marketing support to UK NGOs working to counter online extremism" and will bring together experts to develop best practice and tools. This includes training for NGOs to help them monitor and respond to extremist content, a support desk so they can contact Facebook directly, marketing support for counterspeech campaigns including Facebook advertising credits, knowledge sharing with NGOs, government and other online services; and financial support for academic research on online and offline patterns of extremism.

Recode reports that Tesla is in talks with major labels to licence music for a proprietary music streaming service for its cars. Reports from music industry insiders indicate that the service would have multiple tiers, starting with a simple streaming radio service. It's not entirely clear why the company believes this would be a better option than making a deal to access to extensive catalogues of existing streaming firms such as Spotify, but a Tesla representative said that "we believe it’s important to have an exceptional in-car experience so our customers can listen to the music they want from whatever source they choose. Our goal is to simply achieve maximum happiness for our customers". The company has also revealed plans to build cars in Shanghai to avoid Chinese import taxes.

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DeepMind, Google's London-based AI arm, has proved controversial with its data-sharing deals with the NHS but that hasn't stopped the pair forging ahead with another five-year deal (WIRED). Following its work with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust, which have been using the firm's Streams app to detect early signs of kidney failure, DeepMind has penned a similar contract with Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust. Streams is sold as a secure app that helps doctors and nurses give faster urgent care to patients showing signs of deterioration by giving them relevant information more quickly.

From DDoS attacks to data manipulation, new cybersecurity regulations to organised fraud, businesses and consumers alike are faced with ever greater levels of security threats. Get inside knowledge on the developing threat landscape at WIRED Security 2017, returning to London on September 28.

Conservationists in northern Kenya report that a surge in wildlife killings is having a serious effect on East Africa's endangered giraffe populations (Science). Drought and overgrazing in regions bordering conservation areas have forced herders and their livestock to cross into national parks, while refugees fleeing violence in Somalia have turned to hunting local wildlife due to lack of other food resources. Conservationists are seeking methods of increasing the survival and reproduction rate of the fragile animals in response. Fred Bercovitch of Save the Giraffes says: "This affects all wildlife, but giraffes may be particularly hard hit," observing that they are an "easy target" for poachers.

Your old router is an absolute goldmine for troublesome hackers

A study has found that yoga can be as effective a treatment for chronic lower back pain as standard physiotherapy (Popular Science). Researchers from the Boston Medical Center divided 320 people into three groups, which were respectively given physical therapy, a course of yoga classes designed to aid lower back pain, or some literature about pain management. The results showed that patients who did yoga and who had physical therapy benefited equally from reduced pain and improved function, and that the effects lasted for a year if they kept doing the exercises they'd been shown.

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Valve has revealed new details about its forthcoming Knuckles virtual reality controller on the SteamVR Knuckles Driver developer group (Ars Technica). The spec documents reveal that the controllers, worn around each hand, will be able to independently track the motion of each finger using embedded capacitive sensors. Valve has also just launched this year's Steam Summer Sale, with its usual range of massive discounts on a vast number of games.

Following its spectacular E3 teaser trailer, Ubisoft has revealed new in-engine footage from developer Michel Ancel's eagerly awaited Beyond Good & Evil 2 (Eurogamer). Ancel shows off the massive scale of the in-game universe, which is set to include procedurally generated star systems, real-time environmental changes such as meteors impacting on planets, and missions that can open up to vastly increase in scope. Ancel says: "You can get inside (an orbiting spacecraft), you can sell your pizza, and then instead of getting out of the ship you can decide to explore the ship. And you might discover that there is some slavery, some human trafficking and things like that". Our heroes will then have the option of documenting the activity to take the criminals out of business.

Humble is giving away free copies of grisly co-op survival horror FPS Killing Floor to promote this weekend's FPS sale (PC Gamer). While it's on a much smaller scale than the mighty Steam Summer Sale, the Humble FPS sale includes some great deals. No other purchase is required to claim your free game, and the offer is on until Saturday.

Vibrant circles pulse across the screen, emanating from nowhere in psychedelic colours and speeds, then drifting hypnotically into the distance, suddenly replaced by another series of circles spinning as though in orbit. It’s an animation, but not as we know it. Made in 1938 by Oskar Fischinger, An Optical Poem saw the filmmaker hang hundreds of paper shapes on invisible wires, shooting and then stitching together single frames to mirror, in painstaking detail, the rhythm of Franz Liszt's 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody.

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With five Olympic medals, Ben Ainslie is one of the world's most successful sailors. His next challenge? To win the America's Cup. In this double issue, WIRED joins him and the Land Rover BAR team in Bermuda as he prepares for the race. Plus, we go inside the UK's new unicorn Improbable, and behind the lines at Elon Musk's distribution factory. Subscribe and save now. Out in print and digital. Subscribe now and save.